Cellar dweller — Don't stop believin' — backwords — requisite BEA pic — back in the swing of things

I. Light posting here for a while...On Thursday (6/5) I'll be at the Book Cellar in Chicago, reading from Personal Days! More info here and here and at Time Out Chicago. (Looks like you can drink wine there?!)

II.
Who knew one could write so nicely about...Journey? Ben Ratliff pulls out all the stops:

From the late 1970s to the mid-’80s, Journey’s hits were lavish pop bulletins conjuring amber waves of strip malls. Its melodies resolved quickly over four-four grooves, and the band didn’t indulge much in suite form or rarefied instrumental interludes. Neal Schon was its front-and-center guitar player, bending notes into parabolas as big and sexy as rainbows. Steve Perry was its great theatrical tenor, hitting high notes with a likably strained, through-the-noise voice and Sam Cooke-type embellishments. Once it refined its formula, Journey was pure suburban-teen romantic inspiration. By contrast, Boston sounded more street and more mystical; Styx and Kansas were Trig 1 and 2. —NYT

III. On the Personal Days Amazon page, one can learn—well, I can learn—that 85% of the visitors to the page (as of today) buy Personal Days, while 7% buy a book called Daemon, by the curiously named "Leinad Zeraus." Here's more about that book, verblessly, from Publisher's Marketplace:

Leinad Zeraus's (aka database consultant Daniel Suarez) originally self-published debut technothriller DAEMON, "the story of a terminally ill game designer who unleashes a diabolical, self-replicating Web entity that enlists disaffected Netizens in its mission to destroy civilization," to Ben Sevier at Dutton, in a pre-empt, for publication in fall 2009, followed by a sequel, by Bridget Wagner at The Sagalyn Agency (world).

IV. I wasn't at BEA—but Blvr mg-ed. Andrew was!



V. Haven't written a movie review in a while. How does one do it...? Let's see....OK:

There Will Be Blood = good!